Ithaka pushed onward through
the arteries of North Carolina’s Intracoastal
waterway, past undulating corn stalks on one bank and fields of pink and white
flowers on the other, here and there past folks’ yards and barns and
inflatable wading pools and vegetable gardens and out-buildings – an
intimate and endearing look at America through the keyhole of her back door.
All along, as the miles drop astern, Douglas and I continued to marvel at how
much we were enjoying this puttering in warm weather, in contrast to three
years before, when in the throes of ice storms, we couldn’t get south
fast enough, and every mile seemed an agony. Our reversed perspective was yet
another example of the subtle changes that come over you when you’ve
spent some time cruising, and when you’re not miserable in the elements.
This time, we had the physical and psychological leisure to let ourselves enjoy
where we were, taking the time to look around and amble. It felt all together
different.

Sunrise in Mobjack Bay

In Virginia, our meandering
took us past the entrance to the Dismal Swamp Canal—a parallel route within the Intracoastal system that everyone tells
us is a breathtakingly beautiful jungle ride. But Ithaka’s six foot draft
is a bit too deep for us to make it through without frequent groundings, so
on we went in the main channel, stopping at Great Bridge, Virginia, where we
tied up for two days at the free dock provided to boats awaiting transit of
the lock. (Actually we know of people who’ve stayed there for three months.
No one seems to monitor time there.) At Great Bridge we celebrated a reunion
with some Dutch cruising friends we’d last seen in Honduras, and who
now live in a town nearby. They drove over to see us, bearing fresh baked goodies
and good memories, and for several hours we sat in the cockpit, leafing through
picture albums, reminiscing and planning some future cruising together. Then
they did what friends of cruisers always appreciate most: they drove us to
the grocery store, the hardware store, a local thrift shop, a bakery, a fishing
supply shop, and the public library where we could check our email.

A bridge opens for Ithaka on the ICW

We’d figured we might
hang out another couple of days at Great Bridge and get some writing done,
but the weather forecasts foretold of an approaching
low-pressure system, and the calendar began to pressure us with an approaching
lecture deadline in the Chesapeake. Just being back in the States, for the
first time in years we were actually writing down events on a calendar and
referring to it with painful frequency. The tyranny of time, over which we
had eeked out a tenuous, temporary victory, was reasserting its power. We knew
we needed to pick up the pace and press onward, even though the temptation
was strong to stay awhile.

When the great lock at Great Bridge opened its gates on Monday morning, Ithaka
was the only vessel to enter the mammoth hold. We pulled over to the side,
fenders hanging all along our port lifelines to protect our topsides from the
unforgiving metal walls, and tied our bow and stern to the giant cleats mounted
all along the inside of the lock. Then the gates behind us closed, the water
level slowly dropped and so did we. When the water levels equaled, the forward
gates opened, we untied ourselves and boogied out of there. We were only 12
miles south of downtown Norfolk, a waterfront chock-a-block full of naval vessels,
submarines and giant commercial freighters, maneuvering here and there, lugged
and pushed by tugboats, their giant propellers throwing out a white-water turbulence
that sometimes rocked Ithaka from side to side. We watched several go by us,
heading out to sea, but as they turned east to the Atlantic, we unfurled our
sails, turned north into the Chesapeake, and set a course for Mobjack Bay.

We head through the shipping mecca of Norfolk

The tides coming in and
out of the Chesapeake Bay are nothing compared to the rivers in Georgia,
but still, they’re strong enough that you want
them on your side as much of the time as you can manage. Heading north we had
the incoming tide carrying us for several hours, but our destination was closer
to 10 hours away, so we were also going to have it on the nose at some point.
Fortunately we had good winds off the beam and managed to make decent time.
By 4:00 p.m., we’d meandered into Robin’s Neck in Mobjack Bay,
and were dropping our anchor in 11 feet alongside the marshy bank of the creek.
Near us was an old weathered house that looked deserted – an idyllic
sight – and in the distance was a farm and grain silo – the whole
thing a picture from another time. We throttled back on the chain, and felt
the reassuring tugging and straining that makes you feel well hooked and safe.
By 4:30, with a donkey’s braying carrying through the air, and ducks
cackling nearby, I stripped off my clothes, and began to take a long, hot,
soapy shower in the cockpit. Ah, the perfect end to a perfect day. (Wait, who
said that?)

Bernadette

Just when my hair was full of shampoo, I felt a chill in the air and noticed
a dark squall line approaching us at an alarmingly rapid pace.

“Hey, Douglas!” I called below as the scenery began to disappear
behind a curtain of rain. “Quick, take a look at this.”

He climbed into the cockpit. “Wow!” he said. “It’s
almost black.”

Within a couple of minutes,
the first raindrops were falling on Ithaka’s
teak deck, but in no time at all we felt the wind gusting, and the gentle drops
turning into a hammering torrent. Douglas rushed to close the forward hatch,
and to turn on the sailing instruments and GPS, so we could keep track of depth,
wind speed and position. It was a good thing. Within moments we were engulfed
in the hardest pounding of rain I’d ever experienced aboard. We clocked
the wind at 30, then 35. In the protection of our cockpit, under our overhead
bimini and behind the dodger, we were out of the elements. As I started rinsing
off, the wind gusts hit 40, then shifted dramatically from a different direction.
We could no longer see any scenery around us—just a thick curtain of
gray rain. Then I looked at our depth sounder. Where it had said we had five
feet below our keel a few minutes before, now it said we had less than a foot.

Farmlands surround the marshes in which we were anchored in Robins Neck

“Douglas, we’re dragging!” I bellowed, and immediately turned
on the engine to get control of the boat as he ran forward to begin bringing
up the chain with the anchor windlass. The rain was so thick that I could hardly
see him on the foredeck. Then the depth sounder read 00.0. We were broadside
to the wind and I could feel us aground! The wind was now clocking 43 knots,
and things were getting dangerous fast. The one lucky thing is that the bottom
was mud—not a coral reef that could hole a hull. Worst case scenario,
we could motor our way out of trouble, or (ugh) get pulled. As the anchor chain
kept coming up, I motored us forward. Still the depth sounder read 00.0, and
I could see we were kicking up mud in the water behind us. Eventually, slowly,
we finally began to make progress, inch by inch. We have our anchor chain marked
with colored cable ties – red, white and then blue—to let us know
how much chain we have out, and finally Douglas called back to me at the top
of his lungs that he was beginning to see the red ties coming up. This meant
we had only about 25 more feet of chain to bring up. Finally, in the height
of the howling wind and rain, as thunder and lightening crashed all around
us, I saw him give me the “All’s up!” signal, meaning the
anchor was on deck, and I began to move us back into deeper water.

Adrenaline was in control
now. The wind was clocking around a bit, and I still couldn’t see any shoreline anywhere around us, even though it was only
about 100 feet away somewhere – the rain was still too thick. Completely
disoriented, I steered by compass toward where I thought the middle of the
creek was, the place where we’d had 11-foot depth. It took forever to
fight the heavy winds and make headway, and it was hit and miss to find deeper
water again. Seeing 00.0 over and over again on the depth sounder was petrifying.
Were we motoring toward shallower water? I wasn’t sure! When we finally
found a bit more water, then a bit more, we tried anchoring two times without
success. Then finally the anchor caught, we throttled back on it several times
to be sure, and then Douglas put on the snubber, and rushed back to the protection
of the cockpit as the thunder claps rocked the world.

The sun sets on another cruising day

“Look at you!” I said. He was soaked from head to toe, his hair
plastered down around his face, his clothes sticking to him. As the rain-washed
landscape re-emerged from the fog, the wind calmed, and the donkey’s
brays could be heard again wafting across the marshes.

“Look at you!” he said. I’d never finished rinsing the soap
out of my hair before we’d dragged, and I was still stark naked.